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Ask someone to name Billy Bob Thornton’s most memorable performance and they’ll probably say the lowlife sex addict in “Bad Santa,” or the miserable, drunken baseball coach Morris Buttermaker in the “Bad News Bears” remake. As is often the case in an industry where you’re only as good as your last project, people often forget that he was Oscar-nominated for his role in “Sling Blade” and has actually played a variety of characters both good and bad.
“A lot of people assume I’ve played a lot of bad guys in my career, but I really never did,” Thornton said. “I did a movie years ago called “One False Move” where I played a killer, and I did a few comedies where I played kind of a smartass, but that’s about it.”
Still, Thornton concedes that the “smartass” roles are fun, particularly in “Bad Santa.” “It was a lot of fun to play that part,” he said. “And I’m not saying I’ll never do it again, but for now I’d like to play a few regular guys.
Try as he might, his character in “The Astronaut Farmer,” which opens nationwide on Friday, 2/23, isn’t what many would consider “regular.” But he’s certainly not a jerk, either; Thornton is Charles Farmer, a former NASA astronaut who’s building a rocket in his backyard with the intention of launching himself into space. Doubters tell him he’s crazy and federal agents say they will not allow it to happen, but that’s not enough to stop a guy with a dream.
“It’s a lot like the Frank Capra movies of the ‘40s in that it’s an emotional drama with a lot of humor,” Thornton said, going so far as to call this his “Jimmy Stewart” movie, which he said every actor wants to do at some point in his career.
Stewart, however, never had to square dance the way Thornton and co-star Virginia Madsen (“Sideways”) do at a town fair. “I didn’t know how to square dance before the movie, so I and the rest of the cast had to take lessons, which was quite a fiasco,” Thornton said. “But the bad thing about it is…there’s a lot more footage of us square dancing, so I don’t know if they thought we weren’t that good at it or what, but they didn’t show a lot of our hard work.”
The film was written and directed by the Polish Brothers, heretofore known mostly for the eccentric gems “Twin Falls Idaho” and “Northfork.” Like Thornton, the film is somewhat of a departure in that it’s mainstream and family-oriented.
“While this is for a broader audience than what they’ve done, it’s still a subversive movie in terms of the guy fighting the government and how the government is not necessarily conducive to dreamers,” Thornton said.
Yes, but is this guy a simple dreamer, or is he crazy? “I think dreaming and shooting for a goal is a great thing,” said Thornton, who struggled for years and nearly starved to death in Hollywood before getting noticed. “I think if you don’t follow your dreams — or at least give them a shot — you’re going to be an unhappy person, and that doesn’t do anybody any good.”
Thornton last played a grounded astronaut in “Armageddon,” in which he co-starred with Bruce Willis. It is thanks to Thornton that Willis has a small cameo here as an old friend of Farmer’s. “They wanted a star for the role,” Thornton said, “and I got a hold of Bruce and asked if he’d like to come to New Mexico for a few weeks to work with me, and he said ‘absolutely, man – we’ll have fun.’ Bruce is really good about supporting his friends and he doesn’t mind doing smaller parts in a movie if he believes in the movie.”
Thornton is also amenable to doing bit parts, as he played in “Love Actually,” but warns of being oversaturated. “You have to be real careful in doing too many cameos, but if it’s something I’d really love to do I’m happy to do it,” Thornton said.
Just don’t ask him to play a “smartass.”
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